Honourable señoras, liminal campesinas and the shameful other: re-defining feminities in Bolivia

Abstract

‘Whores’, ‘hookers’ and ‘prostitutes’ are among the many labels used to represent women in the sex industry. As a result, some sex workers develop defence mechanism to cope with this negative labelling. The present study explored the intersecting sources of the ‘whore stigma’ and its management in the city of Tarija (Bolivia). Work involved the triangulation of (1) an ethnography of sex-related institutions; (2) semi-structured interviews with staff from the sex industry, municipal and health authorities and neighbours who lived close to sex trade establishments; and (3) life narratives of women in sex work and people of the general population conducted over two periods of six months each, in 2001–2002 and 2003. This paper describes the intersectional power differentials (of gender, ethnicity and class) in which ‘whore stigma’ unfolds in Tarija. It reveals how women in sex work created defence mechanisms to mediate the tension between honour and shame that defined their devalued condition as women, peasants, indigenous persons and sex workers. In conclusion, this article discusses a possible intersectional conceptualisation of the ‘whore stigma’ within this context and argues for the need for health promotion programmes to engage with these women's coping strategies.